Duke Energy provides power to more than four million people from the high rises of downtown Charlotte to the wide–ranging family homes of Mecklenburg County and beyond. The company considers it a business imperative that its legal representatives display the same diversity as its customers. One of Duke Energy’s values is to continue to build a high–performance culture focused on diversity and inclusion.
“We view diversity in two ways,” explains Kodwo Ghartey–Tagoe, who chairs the company’s diversity committee for Duke’s office of general counsel. “The first way is self–interest. Our industry deals with incredibly complex issues that require creative thinking. Having a diverse team of lawyers address our issues leads to creative solutions and the best outcomes. The second way is social responsibility.”
Marc Manly
Duke Energy
“At the bottom, it’s just the right thing to do,” explains Marc Manly, the company’s chief legal officer. “I believe that our legal department is made proud by our commitment and results. For example, I was born in the segregated south, where I couldn’t go to school with colleagues I now work with every day. I feel like I have done a little part to make our society stronger.”
Duke Energy’s diversity committee provides guidance to and oversight of diversity and inclusion efforts. It seems that Duke Energy has had success in its efforts to diversify its own legal department: 23% of its attorneys are minorities, and 44% are women.
Since one of the best ways to increase diversity is through the legal pipeline, Duke Energy invests heavily in a highly regarded internship program for first–year law students. The program is extremely competitive. Duke Energy reviews hundreds of applicants a year. The interns experience every aspect of Duke Energy’s law department because they receive assignments from all practice areas.
As an example of Duke Energy’s commitment to diversity, Manly joined with other general counsel of major corporations in Charlotte, along with managing partners of several law firms in Charlotte, in 2006 to sign the Action Plan of the Charlotte–Mecklenburg General Counsel and Managing Partners Diversity Initiative.
As part of participation in the action plan, a first–year law student is selected to spend half a summer in Duke Energy’s law department, and the second half of the summer in a Charlotte law firm. Through a partnership with the North Carolina State Bar Association, another student having completed his or her first year of law school will have the opportunity to clerk in Duke Energy’s law department for the duration of the summer. The company has seen several minority law students complete its internship programs in North Carolina, and has expanded the programs to other regions of the country, including its offices in Plainfield, Indiana, and Cincinnati, Ohio.
“We don’t have anything too exotic planned for the future, but we do want to move the most successful aspects of our diversity program to our regional offices,” explains Ghartey–Tagoe. “It’s hard to pick our most effective or best diversity program — it is like picking your favorite child; you just can’t do it,” reflects Manly. “We try to hold ourselves to a set of commitments. We want to have a diverse slate of candidates for every open position. We don’t follow a quota, but having diverse candidates has helped us as a business.” DB
From the November/December 2009 issue of Diversity & The Bar®